Illusions of Grandeur
by Meraki S
Summary: After the destruction of the Expanse, the Enterprise returns to a grateful world. What remains of her crew is restored to the planet they fought for; but Malcolm Reed knows better than to celebrate. A re-imagining of ENT: Home.


Warnings: Mature themes and language. Nothing gory.

* * *

When Malcolm stepped out of the Starfleet shuttlepod onto Earth, he wasn't sure whether he wanted to laugh, cry, or hit something. The sun shone in the same warm familiar way it always did before the Enterprise, before the Xindi, before the number seven million was anything more than an abstract quantity he would have considered 'a lot'. Now that number could be counted in the tears of families for whom the sun would never truly shine again. It could be counted in the times when Trip didn't smile at jokes that only a year ago would have made him roar with laughter. It could be counted in the lines of stress on the faces of the crew, and in the scratches on Archer's face as he stood to address a triumphant world gathered to celebrate its continued life.

Its _life_. Earth was alive, but were those she stood to applaud still alive? How could mankind cheer and clap for _this_ return? For the Enterprise, with her twenty-seven dead. A _third_ of the crew dead, for God's sake! And yet they cheered. Their noise was gaudy and strange, and Malcolm did not need Trip's silent presence beside him to know that the world celebrated men and women whose lives had been cut short as surely as if they had been mowed down by the Xindi super-weapon.

"I've been told that people are calling us – heroes," Archer began, almost haltingly, to address the billions watching in person or on television.

Malcolm wanted to strangle Starfleet brass.

Archer had tried to get out of it: the speech with its pompous bloody script, the dramatic arrival. The _people_. He'd tried to get them all out of it, because no one wanted to be strung up in front of a crowd like scarecrows, like the paper cut-outs of themselves that no doubt children would play with for years to come. They didn't want to face the grateful world. They didn't want to face each other. Hell, they didn't even want to face themselves. And yet Starfleet had been brutally insistent.

_Good publicity._ And yes, Starfleet needed the good publicity; and no one cared how much a few tormented souls suffered in the grip of the world's worship. For they were not heroes. If they had destroyed the Expanse, it had come too late to save themselves. They had lost more than families and crewmates. They had lost their honour; their pride; their belief that humanity was in the right. For how could it be right to steal, to torture, to murder? And yet all had been accessory to these crimes, and more, in the unrelenting desperation of preserving their species.

Had it been worth it? To the rejoicing citizens of Earth, it had. What was a little far-away torture when it meant that their ordinary lives could continue in ease and safety as they always had? But in the privacy of his own thoughts, Malcolm sometimes wondered whether it would have been better for the Enterprise to die with the Expanse that had taken her and moulded her crew into shadows of themselves: one last, great sacrifice, and then the final, eternal peace for them all. It would have been a just reward to die alongside all the damage they had wrought.

And yet Earth needed heroes. She needed idols to worship, even if those idols were made of glass and gold, shattering or slowly melting away behind their grinning masks. She needed someone to keep her safe, even if it was luck more than these broken figurines that had saved her. The Earth looked, and she saw what she wanted to see and what Starfleet wanted her to see: strong, vital, triumphant conquerors, Perseus and Hercules returned to her in the hour of greatest need.

The pain and the scars, except for the glorious battle wounds on Archer's face, which wouldn't even leave a mark, would remain hidden under the long blue sleeves, zipped up and tucked away like the shameful defects they were. Earth need never know the torment she caused her rescuers, for their weakness would terrify her. They could not be weak. They, who had lifted humanity from the valley of the shadow of death, had in doing so forfeited permanently their own humanity.

"I'm sure I speak on behalf of my entire crew when I say: it's good to be home."

Malcolm smiled along with all the others, nodded and clapped like his gut wasn't twisting into a sickened knot at the hypocrisy of Starfleet's script.

He wasn't home. He would never be home. Home, as near as he could make it out, had been the Expanse: the place he had left himself, only to destroy it. This planet could never be any more than a reminder of all that had been and was now gone.

No one could have blamed any of them if they had wept with joy, but the unshed tears Malcolm saw in Trip's eyes spoke not of joy but of frustration and agony; of nights lying awake praying for this day to come, only to find when it did that it had become an unspeakable mockery of all that was lost and broken.

But if there was one small comfort in a sea of confusion and darkness, that could also, paradoxically, be traced back to the publicity. In Malcolm's heart he knew that the reason he alone out of all the senior staff of the Enterprise had been offered a way out of this _arrival_ stunt was the very thing that had first taught him that his own morals were an acceptable sacrifice to the greater good: Section 31. Harris still had a use for him. Harris always had a use for him, and ideally that use did not involve Malcolm's face plastered all over global television for the world to see and remember. A quiet whisper in his ear: _You have permission to decline participation in the homecoming ceremony._ A slip of paper that would excuse him without question. It was the only choice he'd been offered in this whole damn carnival. He'd relished it, if only to spit it straight back into the Section's smug expectation of his compliance. He would not take their concessions, any more than he would abandon Trip to stand alone before the world.

He knew better than to defy Harris, even when the scales were even and he owed no debt. But he had not been able to resist the one small drop of satisfaction in a world that had little more to give him.

One by one, the crew of the Enterprise disintegrated into its component parts, compartmentalising itself into individual units of grief in the form of walking, breathing beings. Archer went off to do something dangerous and physical enough to stop himself thinking; Hoshi vanished to some secret haunt known only to her. And Trip, who had nowhere to go and nothing left for him in this wretched place, could not even bear to remain on Earth. T'Pol took him with her, away to a new planet that was not heavy with memories turned against him.

Which left Malcolm, Travis, and Phlox.

The doctor tried. Malcolm had to give him that. Phlox had never given up on any of them, not even the ones who had bled out and gasped their last under his very hands. He was not giving up now.

"You ought to socialise with your own species. Why don't you show me around San Francisco, hm?"

Never mind that the doctor had previously lived there for six months. It was a transparent excuse, and Malcolm and Travis pretended to think it was a good idea. The acts they put on were not only for the benefit of the world at large, but also for those who still retained some glimmer of hope. If Phlox's degrees in psychiatry gave him the consolation that a bit of light chatter with complete strangers would help to stitch together the shreds of his crewmates' lives, well, Malcolm and Travis weren't about to snuff out that flicker of idealism still remaining. Better that one of them should have it than for it to be swept away with the chaff of everything else worthwhile.

But where there were crowds, there was anonymity; and where there was anonymity, there was the Section lurking behind every door. Paranoid? Maybe, but he'd earned it. Malcolm had made the mistake before of thinking that he was outside Harris's ever-present gaze. The limited safety of paranoia was desirable by far over the mildest consequences, to one's self and others, of thinking that the Section had lifted its scrutiny.

All the same, it was with reluctance that Malcolm donned the only armour that could protect him: the armour of public notice, in the form of his flight jacket bearing the name _Enterprise_ and the symbol that drew eyes wherever it went. Without it, he was easy prey, but with it…not even Harris himself would be eager to stalk through the throng of admirers that this patch would no doubt bring swarming around not only himself but also Travis and Phlox. They would be safe, insofar as it was within his power to make them safe.

All the same, Malcolm picked a table in the bar where he could get his back to a wall. It wasn't as good as a corner – all taken, unfortunately, mostly by giggling couples entirely oblivious of the fact that by all the fates they should be nothing more than a few charred atoms scattered across the sector of space where by sheer luck the Earth still remained – but at least he could see the door and if worst came to worst, he'd have something to brace against.

Harris would not be happy, though, and that was dangerous. Malcolm looked for sudden movements every time someone approached with a question or a pen and paper for an autograph. He let his tongue slide smoothly over the silvered words he'd perfected so long ago – leave them feeling flattered, butter them up. That way they would be thinking about themselves; they would not remember the face that gave the compliment. Anonymity. The tool of the Section, and Malcolm wielded both anonymity and publicity in this careful dance in which he might or might not have a partner. He would never know, because none of Harris's agents would reveal themselves with so many witnesses present. Still, there was always danger. Perhaps Harris would be willing to overlook the crumpled note and the likeness of his former agent smeared across television screens for the eyes of all, but he would not miss the subtleties in play here. In fact it was hardly subtle, the message posted on Malcolm's shoulder for the world to see: _You have no claim on me. I belong to the Enterprise now, to Jonathan Archer and to the crew over which even you have no power._

He played upon the skills he had learned in the Section, signing _Malcolm Reed_ in a hand not his own and differing every time so that the delighted recipients might as well have written the words themselves for all the value they would have as an authentic signature if examined by a professional. He spoke words he did not even hear, until the sound of his own voice disgusted him and the warmth of alcohol in his throat was the only thing that kept him from choking on his empty compliments. But his training did not fail him, and because he knew exactly how to flicker his eyes to places they did or perhaps did not belong, they believed him. He played upon his own skill like a musical instrument until Travis and Phlox faded into the background and he could almost believe that he was back in the Section and the cold hollow in his chest was simply the knowledge of another mission well done.

Then, there was a break. The stream of curious admirers ended with two air-headed damsels who thought themselves very daring and exotic for approaching the _famous_ Malcolm Reed. From the bottom of his nearly-empty glass Malcolm conjured a grin for Travis, who was staring at him with a mixture of annoyance and disappointment.

"You had to wear _that_ jacket."

The unveiled barb stung more than it should. Phlox was grinning benevolently at the whole thing; no doubt he considered a bit of preening to be a healthy and promising sign in an adult male human. Malcolm didn't mind that, but Travis's reaction dug under his skin. The pilot had been beside him on this hellish mission and knew him better than most, if not as well as Trip did. Somehow, Malcolm had assumed that Travis at least would realise that the jacket was not an ornament of simple arrogance. Apparently not. Malcolm wanted to ball the damn thing up and throw it into the man's face.

"Do you think I wear this jacket to attract attention?" _You fool, I wear it to keep us all safe from things that you have no idea exist._

A bit of irritated incredulity filtered into his tone. It was the most real emotion he'd let slip all day, and he regretted it as soon as it was too late to take back. Dropping hints which contradicted Phlox's pretty little illusions would only serve to do what he was actively trying not to do. The Doctor was astute; his frail hopes for the well-being of his charges would not survive many signals to the contrary. Malcolm saw a crease of doubt already forming when he looked at Phlox. Damage had been done, though perhaps not irreparable. With an effort of will, he relaxed his face into a smile that not even the Denobulan could distinguish from genuine. _My little joke, doctor. Let Travis wonder what I'm up to._

"How's your drink?"

A stranger. The signs of danger were immediately evident in the man's belligerent posture. Surely Harris would not send someone this careless, but Malcolm studied the face intently for any mark of Section training. If it was there, he would see it. There was nothing but the sneering envy of a man small-minded enough to believe in the superiority of a race that only by the fickle turn of Fortune's wheel had escaped total obliteration.

This turned out to be the best thing all day, because the man had friends and they were looking for trouble and in a sense Malcolm was too. He got to hit something, anyway, which he'd been wanting to do ever since that damn shuttlepod's door opened onto the unforgiving expectations of a world that wanted its heroes _well done_ and could never be told the awful truth that they were raw and bloody inside. He threw himself into the bar fight with a vigour that was only marginally explained by his desire to avenge the insult to Phlox, and he found himself thinking about Harris, thinking _to_ Harris, as if the agent could read his very thoughts.

_Come for me, Harris. I dare you._

* * *

Months later, there is a call from Archer in the middle of the night. Information is needed, and there is one source and one only that can provide that information.

"First we need an understanding."

Malcolm knows exactly what that understanding is. He knows it by the cold chills of resignation that have been constant since the moment he understood Jonathan Archer's intent.

"About what?"

"That by speaking to me, you're back in the game. Simple as that."

And although he refuses to give Harris the satisfaction of agreeing, Malcolm knows there is only one choice. It is the command of his Captain, and he cannot but obey.

Only time will tell if it is the greatest mistake of his life.

* * *

All dialogue except Phlox's line is directly from ENT: Home and ENT: Demons.

Many thanks to LoyaulteMeLie for giving me the inspiration for this idea and the motivation to actually write it!


End file.
